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Porto Capital culture test
If you are a Portocapitalian... * You believe in personal freedom in an individualistic way. You don't see any connection between this and politics. * You know what football is. Real football, not that uncomprehensible thing the Zartanians play with their hands. You surelly have your own list of the eleven players who should star the national team. You would rather watch a Vexcup match than go to work - the company probably would give everyone a day off, anyway. Basketball is nice, as is volleyball and camel racing. You may have seen some guys playing that strange game called rugby on the beach one day. Baseball and ice sports are, naturally, uncomprehensible. Yes, you've seen baseball once, in a movie. People hit balls with sticks and then run. * You think most problems could be solved if only people would use their brain more frequently than they commonly do. * Half the population lives in the cities, half lives in the fields. If you're a farmer, you may think of the urban life as pleasant and trouble-free. You're wrong. And, if you live in a city, you may imagine the farming life as a very tranquil life style. If you are intelligent, you know it is hell not. Food and drink... * You like beer. Yep. Lot's of it. And a good caşasa - a distilled beverage made from sugar cane. Add lemon and sugar to it, and we have a piriña. Unless you're a more traditional Mounist, in that case you don't drink... A bar is a nice place to have a drink (or lots of drinks) and talk to your friends - and make new friends too! And what else will you do on a sunday evening, other than to go to the bar and blame everyone for everything? * You have your meals with your family, unless you're in a hurry. In that case, you go to a cheap restaurant, or to a bar - they don't sell just booze, they have meals on lunchtime, did you know? * Insects are not food. Nor are mice, horses, snails, cutie doggies or fluffy kitten. But you like those strange parts of the pigs and cows... There's nothing like a feijoada on a saturday! And pepper. Hmm, pepper... On the weekdays, you preffer seafood. Shrimps are good with red pepper! * You don't eat catchup, mustard or mayonese. Why the hell would you put that industrialized salty tomato sauce on your fish? Pepper is much better! Did I already mention pepper? * A café is something you drink early in the morning (black and with no sugar), not a type of restaurant. Politics and economics... * You like the government. No, not really, they're not that good. Ok, they're good, they gave us the colective farms, and free electricity, and free telephone, and free healthcare, and all that free welfare stuff... Yeah, they're good. Are they? Not sure. Well, at least you're better off with this Porto Capital than with Mauretania, Extremo or Brolecia... If you're one of the few remaining Extreman or Mauretanian nationalists, of course, you think otherwise! * You support the existence of welfare and unemployment payments. But you would hope never to need either one yourself! * Are we still friends of the Zartanians and the Cimerans? * The state owns the telephone, oil, steel, mining... Basically everything. * Portocapitalian-style Socialism is simple: The government owns stuff. The government gives us free stuff. Then they stress the importance of a multicultural enviroment on the building of the ideal society. And everyone who disagrees with something is labeled a counter-revolutionary by the media. * Bureaucracy is the norm here. To get a new phone line, for exemple, is very difficult, you'll have to wait for a few months... Unless, of course, you give them a small bribe. No, there's nothing wrong with that, everyone does it. * You vote according to personalities, not ideology - there's not much choice regarding ideologies these days, anyway. All politicians claim to be Communist, Socialist, Social-Democrat or at least left-of-center. You expect the politicians to do lots of public works so you can see where your tax money goes. * The politicians can't be corrupt. In that case, you want their heads to be stoked on the city's main square. * You go to the courts, but only if it is a very important issue, because otherwise it is not worth the expense, the time and the trouble. Civil causes can last years, and penal causes also. * You want the military to stay put, behave themselves, do their parade down the avenue every year, and not get involved in politics. * High-quality schools and universities are free now. Back in your time, however, public education pretty much sucked, and you sent your kids to a private school. Race, religion and language... * You speak, to some degree, either Extreman, Arosian, Sanpatrician, Mauretanian or Mezapatani. You probably use one of these languages at home, and one or two more at work. You probably don't understand much Mezapatani. You often will start a phrase in Arosian and end it in Sanpatrician. Oh, thank god we adopted Aro-Extreman! You may also know some Ingallish and Phénixien. * You're probably an Extreman-speaking Extreman, of Cruisan faith, with fluency in Arosian and Sanpatrician. Or an Sanpatrician-speaking Mounist Mauretanian, using Mauretanian as a second language. Or maybe a Mezapatani. Or even a Arosian-speaking Mounist of Mauretanian ethinicity but with a Lilianesque surname... Your choice. You're proud of your ethno-linguistic-religious-cultural background, but won't discriminate other people based on this. Mixed marriages are common. * You believe in one - or more than one - god. You don't really care for organized religion. If you do, you may belong to several different religious affiliations at the same time. It's not uncommon for your mom to be Cruisan and your dad a Mounist. You probably haven't gone to the church/mosque/temple in the past few months, but you will often pray at home. And, of course, your religion respects the Four Rules of God. * You cannot conceive the idea of a State Church, but you don't mind that the intitutions use the name of God. You really didn't understand why so much fuzz arround that Pedro Carmonte case in Lendosa some years ago... Everyone knows that... * Dates are DD/MM/YYY. Like this: 28/12/301 (and you know what happened on that date!). * The decimal point is a comma, not a dot. * A billion is a thousand times a million. * You know the History of your country ("your countries'", in the plural, should be more exact). You know the Extreman arrival, the Longerathian settlings, the Mauretanian invasion, the wars against Afrazure, the colonial period, the fall of the Empire, Brolecia, Extremo... All that. Longerathian history as well, and some Eras history. Your kids are learning a huge deal of Melanian and New Vexillium history. * Just like in the rest of the world, there was some serious civil unrest here on the late 290s and early 300s. Everything's being solved now. * You can get married by a judge, by the religious authority, or both. Religious weddings have legal value if you take the certificate to a civil court. The reverse, of course, is not true. And, naturally, a man gets only one wife at a time. * Once you're introduced to someone, you can call them by their first name. Maybe you'll even shorten the first name. José becomes Zé, Fernanda is a Nanda. All public personalities, including the President and other lofty figures, are called by their first names except in an official context. * You see foreign films subtitled, never dubbed, except for children's movies. TV movies are also dubbed. * There are only two seasons on the year: hot-and-wet and not-so-hot. * Using a suit is stupid. Unless you are a politician or some sort of bureaucrat, why wearing so many clothes in such a heat? Most of the time, trousers and a short-sleeve shirt are enough. If you're a woman, a short dress is good for wearing on a daily basis. It it's too sunny, you get a hat. If you're going out at night, you get some better clothes, of course. But no suit still. You've never used a scarf in your life. * There are certainly some areas of the city that you want to avoid at night. * You measure everything in meters, kilograms, liters and Celsius degrees. Feet, inches, miles, pounds and Farenheit degrees are uncomprehensible. * You drive on the right side of the road. You stop at red lights if someone is around, otherwise you simply slow down. If you're a pedestrian and cars are anywhere around, you better watch out carefully before crossing the street! * You're not going to die of cholera or other such diseases. * You don't care what family someone comes from. * Cinema is a nice place to go with your girl or family and watch some foreign movie. Theatre is popular as well. But most of your enterteinment comes from TV. * Televídeo Nazionaļ Portocapitaliana (TVNPC-1 to TVNPC-9) is the main TV company in the country, and your prime source for news, sports, enterteinment and all. But since it is - just like everything else - owned by the government, you know it's extremely biased at some times. There are also a bunch of other minor TV stations, either state-owned or private, transmitting to a specific city, region or language group, but none of them is present everywhere as is TVNPC. Oh, those Sanpatricians... * You are very curious about foreigners. You enjoy having foreign visitors in Porto Capital, and wish there were more. You like to talk to them, ask about their countries and especially about what they think of PC. * You consider everyone from former Mauretania to be your fellow countrymen. Someone who speaks a Liliani language is a Liliano. Everyone else is a gringo. * All the countries arround Porto Capital (especially the ones arround the Melanian Sea) are very pleasant places. * Stereotypes? Sanpatricians are slow, but very good-humoured and cordial. Ordlandics, on the other hand, are all too serious with no sense of humour. Listonians are somewhat paranoid. Stervians are just too proud of their non-Melanian heritage. Of course, inside PC itself, the Extremans are drunk, Mauretanians are hard-working with no time for fun and Mezapatani are lazy. Space and time... * If you have an appointment, you'll mutter an excuse if you're twenty minutes late, and apologize profusely if it's more. * If you're talking to someone, you don't get uncomfortable if they approach closer than half a meter. Not at all. * You expect to bargain for everything. * You'll always show up at a friend's house, no need to call. * You'll never leave a message at the beep. Most of the time, in fact, there is no beep. Category:Cultural tests Category:Porto Capital